


Grand Mediator Vantas: Orbit the Skymarshal's Bulge

by jottingprosaist (jane_potter)



Series: The One Where John and Karkat Get Arranged-Married (and Discover Xeno Kinks They Never Knew They Had) [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe - Politics, Awkward First Times, Dubious Consent, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:04:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1999584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jottingprosaist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(or, Karkat and John: Do the Do Despite Incompatible Doohickies)</p><p>“Was it really that bad?”</p><p>“It’s fucking enormous. You could kill somebody with a gene depository shaft that size. How you even manage to keep it inside your lower body protection garments is beyond me. It’s—Quit looking so fucking pleased with yourself, what is wrong with you!”</p><p>Egbert blatantly continues looking pleased as fuck, the infuriating assbarnacle. You’re baffled as to why he seems to be taking your insults as compliments.</p><p>“And it looks like a burrowing furbeast in a high-collared douche sweater,” you snipe.</p><p>“Kind of, yeah!” Egbert agrees cheerfully. “But all dicks look weird. Mine is less weasel-y than Jake’s, at least.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grand Mediator Vantas: Orbit the Skymarshal's Bulge

“ _Well, are you going to pail me or not_?”

Egbert’s face flushes. “Sorry!” His ganderbulbs skip around, seemingly unable to settle on anything. If you’re interpreting his stupid alien expression right—and you might not be, seeing as _everything_ humans do with their throats and teeth is wrong—it’s some combination of fascination and mortification and lust that’s rendering him unable to just fucking pull his bulge out and _get it over with_.

He still doesn’t stop gaping.

You are never getting naked in front of anybody ever again.

You spit, “Fuck you,” cracking the English syllables as hard as you can without properly engaging your glottal clicker. Humiliation is pounding in your gut as you yank your underwear back on— _try_ to yank it back on, only to get your heel caught and end up flopping on the bed like a beached fish.

Egbert flails. “No, that’s not—I just—”

Rage is a helpful counterpoint for the humiliation. “ _Please_. If you were any more disgusted you’d explode in a shower of bile and glitter that spelled out MEDIATOR KARKAT VANTAS IS GROSS ALIEN RADIOACTIVE BULGE REPELLANT.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You didn’t say anything, I think I can figure out what it means when you—”

He basically punches you in the mouth with his mouth. You are suddenly pinned to the concupiscent platform underneath him, his hands gripping your shoulders. Like an idiot, you lie there reeling with shock and wonder if Egbert wants this arranged quadranting red after all, if all his stalling and stuttering was just the world’s _worst_ attempt at blackflirting.

Almost instantly, Egbert jerks back. “Ow, oh my god, that was awful, I’m sorry. Ow, my mouth.”

“You should be ashamed,” you snap without thinking. Still a little dazed, you don’t realize you’re touching your lips until you notice Egbert’s eyes following your fingers back and forth.

He huffs. “I can do better,” he says. “I mean—if you—”

“Whatever. Just—yeah, I mean. Fine.”

Recoiling is the opposite of what he’s supposed to be doing. “If you don’t want to…”

“Fine, fucking… yes! Do it!”

He had better not be about to put that hand on your _cheek_ , the fucking perverted aliensaslfkj he put it on your cheek, thumb pressing the pulse beneath your jaw as he tips your face upward and plants his lips on yours again, this time steady and firm ( _not warm, not cool—oh, you’ve never kissed anyone the same temperature as you, oh_ ) as his nose blows a short sigh against your skin. Your eyes are open and his eyes are closed and suddenly he’s Skymarshal John Egbert again, with the confidence and control you haven’t seen since he stripped out of his uniform after the quadrant binding ceremony. Your skin prickles unexpectedly.

After another handful of moments, Egbert draws back and sighs, this time longer. He also gets off you and stands up again.

“Karkat, I told you before, I’m not going to force you to do anything.”

You gape. “Did it fucking look like you were forcing me? Did I break your pan open? Have you got gashes in your facemeat?”

“Well, if you’re uncomfortable—”

“Are you uncomfortable?” A thought hits you. “Shit. Fuck, I didn’t even think—”

Of fucking course he doesn’t want to pail you—why would he? Egbert didn’t ask to get shoved in a political quadrant with an alien any more than you did. How many times has he brought up the option of _not_ having concupiscent relations even though you’re nominally in a concupiscent quadrant? And the whole time you were so absorbed in your own trepidation that you didn’t even _notice_ his.

“I’m just going to go shove my head in the load gaper and drown.” Face burning, you grab your pants and start sliding off the end of the concupiscent platform.

“Jesus, would you quit that!” Egbert shouts. “Every time I say something you take it completely wrong and run away with it! You’re worse than Dave.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think? You keep talking about not having sex even when I’m telling you to put your pink mammal genitals on my nook and hump! Do you want to fuck me or not?”

“Yes!” Egbert yells back. “Do you?”

“YES!”

You think you’re both equally startled by just how loud you shouted. In sudden silence, you blink at each other awkwardly.

“So you’re not—” you start at the same time Egbert says, “You really want to—”

“Fuck. What—?”

Egbert squints at you in what looks like embarrassment, but at least he’s looking you in the face now. “You’re sure you want to?”

You swallow. On one hand, xeno porn was never your thing even back when the prospect of pailing an alien was a complete non-possibility, and most of the time Egbert is annoying as fuck anyway. And you just. Fuck. You always thought you’d fill your first red bucket with someone you were actually flushed for, _really_ flushed for, the way serendipity was supposed to happen.

On the other hand, you’ve been sulky and miserable and haven’t gotten off in over two bilunar perigrees. And thanks to the terms of your political mono-quadrant binding, you’re not _ever_ in your life going to get off again with anybody except John Egbert. At least, not unless the Alternian Restructured Empire breaks ties with Skaia and you get to kiss this sham of a matespritship goodbye. Which, thanks to Feferi’s investment in her alliances… it’s unlikely.

“No. We. We should.”

Egbert looks relieved. You’re still just bad enough at English that your hesitations pass unnoticed—or maybe you sound as awkward as you feel. Troll Will Smith you are not. If you were that smooth, you might be able to make this relationship work.

When Egbert leans in to kiss you again, you grab a double handful of his shirt and haul him closer. He makes a surprised sound against your mouth and promptly climbs into your lap, pushing you back onto the concupiscent platform.

You shiver despite the situation. This… isn’t so bad. Egbert kisses like he flies—like he flies on his glider, that is, not his spacecraft—confident and thorough and stirring and okay, fuck, it’s nothing at all like the way soaring on a glider works, but it _feels_ like the way he looks when he’s hanging suspended in the air miles above the dirt, riding the wind like it’s a purrbeast. It’s. Or something.

“What were you staring at, anyway?” you demand when the kiss breaks, because you ruin everything.

“I just—I thought you had a dick?”

“What?”

“A—a bulge, you know. I mean I knew about your man boobs but I was pretty sure I remembered you telling Dave to suck your bulge one time, so.”

“First of all, they’re not _man_ boobs, they’re rumblespheres, everyone has them, I told you that. And second of all, I _do_ have a bulge, shitpipe. What the hell did you think this was?” Before you can think twice, you grab his hand and slap it down between your legs. Egbert’s palm covers your entire bone bulge neatly, the tips of his fingers reflexively curling under the edge of it _just_ far enough to brush your acid valve.

“Um. Your pelvis? You mean it’s…” Egbert leans back and peers down at your junk. “I thought you just meant ‘bone bulge’ like ‘boner,’ not like actual bone!”

“Can you n—wait, you mean you _don’t_ have a bone in yours?”

“Haha, no, Karkat!”

You thump your head against the mattress in relief. (You’re going to _kill_ Nepeta.) “Oh thank god.”

Egbert slides his fingers a little farther down, touching your acid valve again. You buck in surprise when a shock of sensation shoots through you.

“Get back over here,” you snap, and haul him down again, unable to take him looking at you like that. If you think too long about Egbert handling your mating parts—it’s not that you’re _queasy_ about it, but you don’t—you’re not quite—

Maybe he gets it, or maybe he just likes kissing you. (It’s a little comforting to think that he isn’t ready for that himself, either.) You get your act together and start kissing him back. The way he traces your mouth gently with the tip of his tongue makes something stir inside of you. In response, you vent the sensation by dropping sharp little nips to Egbert’s bottom lip, just _barely_ keeping from biting down too hard. He huffs in surprise and surges against you, his tongue thrusting into your mouth. You bite that, too.

It’s—yeah, it’s nice. It’s not like kissing Equius: you don’t have to stay on your guard for the next shift in balance, the next attempt at reclaiming control. (Fucking human Jesus, you never thought you’d miss his disgusting sweaty face but you’re never going to kiss him again.) It’s… relaxing? This is fucking _weird_ , but ten minutes later you are wrapped around John Egbert and not even clawing his shoulders a little bit, leisurely grinding up against his hip with distant but rising interest as he sucks amiably on your lip.

You’re not really turned on yet, but for the first time you can see yourself actually getting there. The next time he makes one of those throaty whale noises, which you suppose must be an alien sex call of some kind, you chirp back. So maybe he, uh, knows it’s okay to proceed or something? Can he even understand your sub-linguistic set without proper troll instincts?

Egbert’s head pops up. “What?”

Apparently not. “Nothing. Just keep—Shut your stupid face!”

“I didn’t say anything!” But he’s still grinning like the dirt ape he is.

Frustrated, you wiggle against him pointedly. He wiggles back with enthusiasm.

You freeze.

“What the fuck is that, Egbert.”

“What?”

“The fucking _bone_ you promised me you didn’t have!”

“It’s, uh—it’s a boner? But it’s not, like, _bone_.”

“It sure as fuck feels like it!”

“…Good work?”

You have to take some deep breaths. After a couple of moments, Egbert’s increasingly baffled face intrudes on your view of the ceiling.

“Karkat? Are you okay?”

He has a fucking _calcified horrorterror_ in his pants. After his alien bulge gets through with your nook, you are never going to be able to have sex properly again.

Fuck, whatever—in this stupid one-quadrant binding you’re never going to have sex properly again _anyway_.

“Take your pants off,” you tell him.

“What’s—”

“ _Let me see your goddamn bulge_.”

Egbert grins and winks. “Wow, Karkat, all you had to do was ask!” He kneels up on top of you and pops the buttons of his jeans. When he does, you can clearly see the size and shape of the bulge pressing through the denim.

It pushes out more through his underwear when he tugs his fly open.

It fucking _pops out_ when he shoves his underwear down to mid-thigh.

Suddenly you understand all of Strider’s jokes about “touring America’s best and biggest dicks” back when you and Egbert did your pre-binding political speeches at the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building and the Washington Monument.

“Okay, you can quit staring, I get it,” Egbert mutters. _Now_ he has the gall to look embarrassed. “We’re equal now.”

“(Oh my god, I’m fucking dead. I’m going to be dead of fucking. This is the absolute apotheosis of the universe’s work on the sick joke that is my worthless life. My pan-dead alien sham of a matesprit is going to fuck me to death on his monster bulge and I am going to burst in a shower of jizz and disgusting mutant blood that marks the dissolution of an entire intergalactic peace treaty over _quadrantcide by pailing_.)”

You’re really just working your way up to a good head of steam when Egbert interrupts you by climbing off _again_. He’s—oh, he’s frowning now.

Holy fuck, if you have to _beg_ for the opportunity to meet your romantic (and political) obligations to pail him, you’re going to dissolve in a puddle of ragefroth. You grab for his shirt. “No, fuck, what are you doing, come back here.”

“Thanks, but with that expression on your face, no. My dick is done, Karkat. My dick is officially retired forever.”

It is looking sort of… less intimidating. The way it flops when Egbert tucks it back into his underwear is actually almost normal.

“What did I do?” you demand, frustrated. _And how hard is this going to make the next 80 years of matespritship_?

“Well it kind of looked like you were thinking ‘Skymarshal John Egbert is gross alien bulge repellant’.”

“Touchy,” you mutter.

Egbert looks pissed.

“Shit, fuck! Touché. I meant touché, fuck your planet and all its people and your inability to stick to one sensible language.”

The frown cracks into a snorted laugh. Yes, better.

Egbert scratches the back of his head and sits down on the edge of the concupiscent platform. With his pants open and his shirt rumpled and his lip nicked just a _bit_ where you went overboard once, he looks… different. Different than you’ve ever seen him before, not militarily controlled or annoying and goofy or sleepy-stupid. “Was it really that bad?”

“It’s fucking enormous. You could kill somebody with a gene depository shaft that size. How you even manage to keep it inside your lower body protection garments is beyond me. It’s— _Quit looking so fucking pleased with yourself, what is wrong with you_!”

He blatantly continues looking pleased as fuck, the infuriating assbarnacle. You’re baffled as to why he seems to be taking your insults as compliments.

“And it looks like a burrowing furbeast in a high-collared douche sweater,” you snipe.

“Kind of, yeah!” Egbert agrees cheerfully. “But all dicks look weird. Mine is less weasel-y than Jake’s, at least.”

“I don’t fucking want to know.”

That’s a lie: you kind of do. Ranger Jake English has the best gluteal muscles of any being on Skaia or Alternia and this is a commonly known fact. It had sort of cheered you up back when the Skaian diplomats had still been debating who to bind you to and English had been one of the possible candidates.

“I guess my dick is out of retirement, then,” Egbert says. “Uh… just maybe not today. Not that I’m usually not able to get it up! It’s just…”

For a second, he looks so defensive and nervous and tired that you feel an honest to god pang of actual pity—probably the first. It takes you so off guard that you blurt, “Me too.”

Instantly, you start kicking yourself internally. Troll Will Smith you are _not_. Look at you, scrambling for pathetic commiseration at the first opportunity like the ham-handed horn-rubbing wiggler you are, just—

“Good,” Egbert sighs, and lies down on his back beside you. “I mean, not _good_ good, obviously. But—like, it’s good we’re on the same page and everything. Because I…” His face scrunches up in embarrassment. “I kind of do want to, you know. Have sex. With you. I think? I just—it’s hard. Not my dick, my dick isn’t hard anymore. But, like. Aliens.”

“I think my thinksponge just dribbled out my ass because of the sheer idiocy I just had the horrible misfortune to have vomited in my face.”

Egbert barks a startled laugh. It took him almost three perigrees to stop taking your words with the gravitas they deserve, but since then he’s reacted to almost everything you say with obnoxious humour.

“Feel like Mario Kart?”

Where the fuck did your pants go.

Behind you, Egbert is laughing even more as you root around for your missing clothing. It’s… not a terrible feeling.

Fuck him, though, because you’re gonna get Princess Peach before he does.

(You lose three games in a row on Egbert’s useless non-biological console and the way he just keeps _laughing_ makes you so angry that you shove your mouth on his just to shut him up, because that always works in romcoms. Troll Will Smith does not fail you. You end up making out on the couch for an hour, grinding and pawing through clothes like horny pre-adolescents, until Egbert’s chat alert goes off—something something missing airplane in dangerous conditions, Skymarshal help us.

After he goes, you lie on the couch for another hour and don’t touch your nook but you think about it, for the first time in perigrees. And you think about Egbert touching it. The idea’s not quite so bad, anymore.)

 

*

 

The issue ends up not getting pressed for a while. Egbert’s emergency call turns into another one, then another three, and then suddenly the week of scheduled down time is over and he’s off to Texas to do run kind of coordination training seminar with Seamarshal Strider and his troops. In between, there isn’t time for you to so much as bite Egbert’s lip, let alone end up back on the concupiscent platform with him.

Not that you’re bitching about that, though. Despite what Sollux likes to say, you’re not _actually_ the useless love interest in a badly written romance novel, existing only when it’s convenient for you to orbit Egbert’s massive bulge. You might not be the Flagship Piloteer of Her Imperial Reformation’s fleet, but you _are_ the Grand Mediator, goddammit, and you have important work to do.

It’s all paperwork, of course. Paperwork and fucking emails. After all, your practical function is to maintain a good relationship between Skaia and the Empire.

…By orbiting Egbert’s bulge, ugh. Being quadrant-bound. Whatever.

As you work your way through today’s newest stack of emails, you’ve got the weird non-biological propaggrandization cube turned on and tuned to the news. Having two Skaian Marshals in the same city means a press conference, of course, which means that Egbert and Strider are currently fielding questions from a bunch of journalists who are determined to ask about anything other than what’s relevant to the training seminar. It satisfies you to know that Egbert is having to deal with the same bullshit that you are.

“ _Skymarshal, what’s it like being in a gay relationship with an alien_?”

You don’t stop shouting obscenities at the cube until you realize that you’ve missed the beginning of Egbert’s answer. Actually, it looks like Strider fielded the question—probably tried to dismiss it—but Egbert is waving his hand for attention anyway. Glowering, you simmer back into your chair to watch.

“—isn’t professional of you at all, and I’ve answered this question before, but I’m still going to answer this now.”

He’s frowning hard, looking literally angrier than you’ve ever seen him. It takes you a moment to figure out that the reason you feel so off-balance is because you’re subconsciously expecting to hear the subharmonics of Egbert’s growl. In the stage lights, his eyes are so brilliantly blue.

“First off,” he announces, “ _I’m not gay_. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve explained this before, but people seem to keep forgetting. I’m not gay, I’m _bisexual_.”

That was ultimately the reason that you ended up with Egbert instead of English. Apparently it’s some kind of big fucking deal for humans. You never quite understood the issue, but fuck, even you do a better job of keeping track of the irrelevant details than these shitsacks in press badges.

“Secondly,” Egbert presses, even more stridently, “Karkat isn’t gay either.”

Wait, what.

“And he isn’t straight or bisexual! Alternians don’t experience sexual orientation the same way we do. When we explained to him what ‘gay’ meant, he completely flipped out. He doesn’t want anything to do with our labels. So to answer your question, that means that neither of us can possibly be in a gay relationship, and I’ll thank you to stop saying that we are.”

You are going to fuck this alien so hard.

 

*

 

Egbert doesn’t get back from Texas for another nine hours. That turns out to be a good thing, because it takes you five minutes to gather up a stack of absorbent towels on the concupiscent platform, twenty-five minutes to double back and change the platform’s dirty sheets (eight of those spent skreeing at the fitted sheet), and then three hours to find a bucket.

When you found out, perigrees ago, that all of the buckets Egbert had lying around were used for cleaning or assfistingly idiotic japery, you had exploded at him. He’d tossed them all out in placating confusion. It’s only now that you’re starting to think you might actually _enjoy_ fucking him, which means you’re going to need a pail. And _there are none_. What do humans even _do_ with their slurry?

You regret so many things, but right now you mostly regret all the porn you stubbornly didn’t watch.

…Is there any left in your email trash from Sollux’s most recent missives?

Fuck. You emptied the bin.

With two hours left to go before Egbert gets back, you succumb to ~~nerves~~ curiosity and try to hack his laptop. From all the jokes that Harley and Lalonde and Strider the Douchier have made, it’s pretty obvious that Egbert has porn, though you’re still unclear on exactly what kind of porn it is. But anything is better than nothing—or at least, it would be if you could get into his laptop, but it’s fucking hackproof.

What that essentially means is that you can’t guess his password, even given an unlimited number of attempts.

Three minutes before Egbert walks in the door, you realize that you could have just used the internet on your own husktop.

“Karkat, what are you—”

You fling yourself backward onto the concupiscent platform and try to sprawl—you know, like, casual and not too try-hard but at the same time undeniably enticing. It’s pretty much ruined with the way your husktop clatters off the side of the platform. Fuck. You had the sprawl looking so good earlier.

“…doing. Uh.”

Egbert’s not looking at you. He’s not even looking at—

Oh, man, he’s looking at your thighs. He is definitely staring at your thighs. You are a god.

“Do we have to have a repeat of last time’s song and dance, or are you going to take your pants off and get over here?”

Egbert snickers. “Oooh, Mr Vantas, oooh.”

He does start unbuttoning his shirt, though, so you don’t snap; you just lie there and do your best not to fidget. It’s easier if you watch his hands instead of his face—partly because you’re imagining what it’s going to be like when he puts those hands on your mating parts, and partly because those hands are making him increasingly naked.

“Towels?”

“Do _you_ want to clean up the mattress after?”

“Oh, hey, good thinking!”

He’s gonna—yeah, wow, that is a lot of completely naked mammal flesh. You at least left your underwear on, but Egbert has no decency and he’s crawling on top of you and _touching your face again whyyyy_ and kissing you like a, like, like he does, that thing he does with his tongue, letting out a sigh as he settles down on top of you, slow and comfortable, like you’re the best thing, like he really wants you, wants this.

Egbert starts enthusiastically exploring your jaw, your—oh, fuck, your neck, this alien does _not_ even give a shit about taking it slow. His teeth are right on your jugular, even if he doesn’t seem interested in using them.

“Not gonna lie, I wasn’t expecting to come home to this!”

“Yeah, well,” you mutter gruffly. What the fuck do you even say to that— _that’s what happens when you talk about me like you think I’m pitiful and need protecting on an international propaggrandization feed_?

You scrape your nails across the nape of Egbert’s neck to reassure yourself. He hums in response, nothing like a protest. It’s fucking scary, what he’s doing, but as seconds pass and your neck don’t acquire any damage except maybe a blossoming concupiscent shame badge, you start feeling a little bit excited by it. Throat kisses are old school romance, like upturned palms and exposed backs.

You’d considered waiting for Egbert while lying on your front, presenting your back unguarded to him, but that had seemed way too forward. But. Maybe you should have, after all. Even if he probably wouldn’t have gotten it.

This. This is good.

As if to prove you wrong, Egbert nuzzles down your throat and bites your cervical strut.

“Ow, fuck! Watch it!”

“Well excuse me! Who was the one biting the shit out of me yesterday?”

“It’s not—” No, it was totally like that. “Give me some fucking warning, would you?” you grumble.

Egbert’s face does that thing again, where you’re not sure if you’re interpreting his expressions right. He ducks back down and kisses your cervical strut again, though—properly, without teeth—and then proceeds to keep going.

You get increasingly shivery as he slides down your body, scratching with his tiny nails (fuuuuuck the tendency for human males to keep their claws short and blunt and sexual as all hell), licking and sucking everything his mouth comes in contact with. He sucks at your rumblesphere until you get embarrassed and push him down— “(Quit it, they’re tiny, I have no fucking chest to speak of, stop fondling them).” Undaunted, he makes his way down your stomach, and you just. _Wow_. He is really going for it, throat and stomach and all the soft vulnerable parts of your body. You can’t even look down out of embarrassment at the prospect of meeting his eyes; you just stare at the ceiling and try not to gasp out loud, tense and shivery with anticipation and nerves and arousal. John Egbert is romancing the fuck out of you and you do not know what the hell to do.

“Karkat, are you doing okay?”

“What? Fuck, I’m fine.”

“You’re not usually this quiet!”

“I’m—skkkkrt, fuck, quit asking that, I’m fine! This just—fuck—this isn’t the way I thought it would go, all right, I had a plan, I was going to be in charge of this.”

“Nope,” Egbert says cheerfully. “I’m the leader, it’s me.” With that, he tugs your underwear off in three quick jerks—over your bone bulge, under your ass, and down your legs. Every instinct you have is telling you that that is exactly the type of operation Egbert is genetically predestined to fuck up in the dorkiest way possible, and yet he did it perfectly. _How_.

“Fuck you, I am a natural born leader _rrrrkt_ Egbert I _swear to god_.”

He fixes his teeth on the flesh of your inner thigh and bites again, very gently, his eyes creased mischievously. It’s barely a bite at all, just the framing of his teeth on your skin and his tongue stroking wetly.

His mouth moves more inward, and up, and you are so transfixed by it that you almost don’t realize his tongue is laving a broad path toward—

“—( _OHHHmyshitguzzlingfuck god) fuck EGBERT what are you doing_.”

Egbert’s tongue is still sticking out from when he touched it to your nook, on account of how you grabbed him by the hair and yanked him up so quickly. He looks caught somewhere between bafflement and indignation.

“Eating your pussy? If that’s okay, I guess?”

“No, fuck, why would you even think that’s okay, _that’s not even remotely okay_. Does it look that’s a part of my body that you can apply your hopbeast dentition to, even if they are the saddest excuses for fangs in the known universe? _Why would anybody want their nook EATEN_ , _Egbert_. Is this a thing, do humans do this, is this what you want from me—”

“Oh my god, Karkat, calm down!” You still have Egbert by the hair, but he squirms upright and grabs you by the head right back, hands firm and steady on either side of your skull. “I’m not actually going to eat anything! I promise.”

“ _What the everloving fuck were you putting your teeth onto my nook for, then_?”

“I wasn’t going to bite you!” Egbert insists. “I was just going to lick it!”

You let your fists relax from his hair a bit but keep your thighs pressed tightly together. “Why?”

“To make you feel good?” Egbert is now looking at you like he’s the one who has a right to be confused, the fucktruck. “Do trolls not do that?”

“Wow, let me think about it, NO.”

“I guess you do have pretty sharp teeth. But I swear, I wasn’t going to bite anything.”

“You bit me before,” you accuse.

“I wouldn’t bite you there!”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

Egbert at least has the decency to look contrite. “I sort of figured you would, but maybe not.” He pauses a moment before wiggling slightly. “So if I _tell_ you I’m not going to bite you, can I go down on you?”

This is the moment when you realise that, between your still-clenched thighs, your nook is throbbing. Before he got down to thigh-level, Egbert was working some freaky human magic with his tongue, and your nook knows it.

It takes you approximately five seconds of struggling with the conflict between ‘but Egbert’s teeth!’ and ‘but Egbert’s _tongue_.’ Then you growl in frustration, lie back down, and open your knees again.

Egbert smooths his palms down your thighs. Ostensibly he’s pushing them wider, but it feels more like his focus is on soothing you. “Jeeze, it’s okay. I won’t bite you, I promise!”

“Yeah, I got it.” You can feel his breath on your nook. Your scalp prickles with anxiety.

“Karkat, really.”

“I said _I got it_ , Egbert.”

“Karkat!”

You jerk your head up in surprise. Egbert glares up from between your legs.

“I need to know that you get this, Karkat. If you don’t want me to do this, that’s _fine_.” His face gentles. His hands rub up and down your thighs again, this time _definitely_ soothing. You shiver because _ahhhhh_ why is he papping you why is it working. “Like, I would really like to eat y—uh, lick your pussy. But. I’m kind of not comfortable with how… not comfortable you sound?”

“Rrrrk _Egbert_. I—” You bounce your head off the mattress and try to be very, very calm. You are the calmest, it is you. “I’m going to say this one more time, okay. If I want you to quit shit, I will open up your face with my claws. If I’m not doing that, I need you to assume I don’t want you to quit shit, and stop _asking me to beg you_.” You take a deep breath and look down at him again. “Now lick my nook, treehumper.”

It takes a moment before Egbert smiles. “Promise you’ll claw me?”

You rasp a little, just the faintest bit relieved and more than a bit glad he can’t parse your sub-linguistic set. “Promise.”

He huffs out a breath and puts his head down again. You drop your head too, rubbing your horns against the blankets to soothe the frisson of anxiety that goes up your spine. Egbert pets your hips. When you twitch, his petting turns into pressure that holds your hips in place. It makes you inhale sharply.

You are the _calmest_. You are calm and collected and _hhhhhh_ he’s licking you he’s licking he’s—wait he’s— “ _Egbert what the fuck_.”

“Okay, I’m stopping, look how fast I stopped.”

“What the hell was that?” No, wait, calm. Calm.

“…Is this a trick question?”

“I said lick my _nook_ , not my acid valve! That’s disgusting, oh my god, I was wrong, get your mouthmuscle out of there.”

Egbert peers quizzically between your legs. “Karkat, I was just licking what’s down here.”

He’s still breathing on you and your nook pulses just hard enough that you don’t call things off. Instead, you shove a hand down there and explain magnanimously.

“This,” you say, illustratively spreading the lips of your acid valve just beneath the sheltering overhang of your bonebulge, “is my acid valve. Also known as the place where I piss from. It has no part inhhh—” You stutter because Egbert’s warm, blunt finger joins yours, grazing the sensitive flesh. “—In concupiscent relations.”

“Okay, so where…?”

You curl your fingers around his hand and guide it lower. Suddenly the sexy is back and your mouth is so dry you’re having trouble breathing. Egbert’s blunt-nailed fingertip skims down, down, across the dry hidden seam of your nook until suddenly something gives and his finger slips right the fuck in to where you are hot and slick, and you chirp and he curls his finger and you _yowl_.

“Shut up,” you say, before Egbert says anything, “shut up, it’s been a long time, okay, _shut up_.”

Still giggling, Egbert wiggles his finger some more. You hear your nook slurp faintly. The absurdity of it gets erased by the raw burn of his finger inside you. It _has_ been a long time and—ah, wow, okay, yes. Aaaand the tongue, ah. Hn.

“Doing okay?” Egbert asks. You jerk your hips aggressively at him. He snickers and licks the top of your nook again. Then again, and this time, it’s slower. The tip of his tongue presses in above his finger, spreading the slit of your nook, then strokes upward with agonizing precision.

The sensation is _unreal_. Equius may have done a fantastic job beating your nook pleasantly black and blue with his bulge, but he never managed anything like this. Wet and softly textured and warm—god, warm, like you—Egbert’s tongue slides up and down the slit of your nook, then suddenly plunges in deeper above his finger. He pulls his finger out, only to replace it with his tongue, sharp little nookteasing jabs that make you squirm. He hooks his hands over your thighs and pulls you closer to him, doing what feels like his goddamn best to shove his whole face into your nook. It’s the fucking enthusiasm of it that gets you, makes you chirp embarrassingly and spread your legs father.

Egbert grunts. It takes a second for you to register it as discomfort, right about the moment when you feel him knock the bridge of his nose against your bone bulge. You try to tilt your hips up more, and Egbert gets his hands under your ass and lifts, but a few seconds later he’s angling his head to get deeper into your nook and smacks his nose again. With a yelp, he withdraws.

“Ugh, yeah, that’s why it’s called a nook,” you mutter, sitting up. “Because it’s in a nook. I told you it wasn’t meant for that. You don’t have to…”

“No, just roll over,” Egbert pants. He urges you over with a hand on your ass, still looking so inexplicably eager to get his mouth all over your mating parts that you pretty much lose all ability to resist. (If nothing else, this job has taught you when _not_ to pursue an argument.) You just grab a towel from the stack and shove it under your hips as you roll.

At least this way it’s easy for you to muffle your moan in the blankets when Egbert dives back in, one of his big callused hands on each of your gluteal mounds to spread them wide. He can get his tongue deeper from this angle, and fff _fuck_ does he go for it—a deep curling lick from right inside your nook all the way up the slit, then back down to tonguefuck you in teasing darts. You growl and he abandons your hole entirely, just laps and sucks at the delicate folds of skin and muscle that hide your nook.

When finally he pulls back to gulp a breath, you feel a trickle of liquid run from your nook to the cupped underside of your bone bulge. Oh god, you’re actually getting wet. You really are going to need the pail.

“Is pink normal?” Egbert asks.

“You could… do better,” you say as dismissively as possible. It doesn’t really work, given the way you’re huffing.

“Rude,” Egbert snorts, but he sounds freakishly happy about it. He buries his face between your legs again before you can retort.

“I was _kidding_ ,” you gasp five minutes later, when Egbert comes up for air and you can make words without accidentally chirping like a horny wiggler. It probably doesn’t matter because he’s got his arms hooked under your thighs and his hands on your ass to hold you still, and he can feel how hard you keep trying to grind on his face ( _unintentionally_ ). Your nook is sopping and you are _hungry_ , hungry down to your core for something to squeeze and grind and ride the way biology tells you to.

“Eating pussy is serious business, Karkat! I don’t joke about that.”

“It’s not a pussy and you’re not e- _ah_ -ting anything, Egbert, fuck.”

He pets your nook again, this time with two fingers, trailing the tips of them around the dilated edge of your nook. It tries to clench on them, desperate to be filled.

You crane your head back to glare at him, frustrated, only to find Egbert staring at your nook with what looks like fascinated lust. Embarrassed, you shove your face back into the blankets. Egbert teases the squirming tips of your gene feelers with his fingertips, stroking and swirling and pressing into the soft lining of writhing cilia until you swear furiously. It just makes him push farther in—and this time he gets deeper, two blunt hard fingers shoving in and stretching you out now that you’re soaking wet and spread. You moan in some combination of discomfort and relief, because it’s what you wanted but not _quite_ —too bony, too inflexible, too short—and you just _OH_ fuck he’s touching your shame globes, he found your shame globes and he’s fondling them like it’s a fucking game of whack-a-tunnelbeast.

 Before you can get words out, Egbert makes a triumphant sound and crooks his fingers _hard_. You fucking screech, slamming your legs shut and convulsing with pleasure and it is _so fucking difficult_ to remember why you shouldn’t just gush a bucket all over his hand.

 “Stop, stop, stop,” you’re wheezing, trembling your way back from the edge as Egbert makes anxious noises and pulls his fingers out. Slurry oozes out after them, so much of it that at first you think you really did come. But then through the dimming crest of pleasure you feel your seedflap cramping angrily, still holding back the gene bladder full of slurry, and you relax just a bit.

 “Shut up, idiot,” you gasp, rolling halfway over to shove a shaky hand over Egbert’s mouth to cut off his apologies. “I’m just—don’t want to come all over the bed yet.”

 “You’re okay?” Egbert asks from behind your hand. That’s when you fully process how much geneslime is all over his face. He’s pink-cheeked, yeah, but he’s also _pink-cheeked_ —and pink-chinned and pink-nosed and _ghhhhh_ licking his mouth. Or maybe he was licking your hand, but when you yank your hand back, he licks his lips for real. Your nook throbs hotly.

 Fuck it—now or never.

 “Put your stupid bulge in me,” you demand.

 Egbert pretends to swoon. “God, I love it when you talk dirty. I think that’s actually my favourite thing about you, Karkat, it’s the way you just _romance_ me.”

 “ _Fuck me now, John Egbert_.”

 And you maybe put your fingers in your nook a little bit? Like, not super overtly or anything, but you reach an arm behind yourself and slip two fingertips into your nook, super careful with your claws and—yeah, okay, it’s overt, the way you spread them just a bit, glaring over your shoulder at him and showing your nook like it’s on display. The laughter slides off his face, replaced by more urgent arousal. The little kernel of embarrassment in your chest is outshone by your swelling smugness gland.

 “Do you wanna… turn over?” He sounds breathless.

 “You’ll have the same problem hitting my bone bulge,” you say. “Do it like this.” And sue you, okay, but if you can’t have the serendipitous red first time that you wanted, you can at least have it the _way_ you wanted, with your flushmate spooned up behind you, covering your vulnerable back, breath against your exposed nape.

 (And it’ll be easier to muffle any noise you make when he’s getting that monstrous bulge into you, easier to pass off pain as pleasure. Fuck. Whatever.)

 Egbert crawls on top of you, his mouth making a trail of sucking bites up your flank and shoulder in the wake of his wandering hands. He gets to your neck and nuzzles, dropping more of those throat kisses that leave you shivery as he eases down on top of you. It’s closer to weird than comforting, given that you never let Equius on top of you and also that Egbert is furry and flat-chested, lacking even the meanest little first-moult rumblespheres. But you manage to slide half of your hand over the fingers Egbert has pressed into the mattress beside your head, and you stealth hold hands for a couple seconds, which is nice.

 Then Egbert notices and threads his fingers into yours and holds your hand for real, and that’s even nicer. Warm-chested and oddly relieved, you chirp at him. He makes a whale noise back and squeezes your hand.

 “So I’m just gonna…”

He moves tentatively on top of you. Suddenly you realize there is a whole lot of hard bulge pressing against your ass. It does an excellent job of extinguishing that little seed of warmth in your thoracic cage.

 “Yeah,” you grunt, spreading your legs. “Yeah, just…”

 Egbert squeezes your hand. You try not to hold it too hard in return as he shifts position, puts down a knee on either side of your thighs. It helps, the little noise he makes, the absentminded kisses he’s pressing to the back of your neck as he, hff, he rubs the head of his bulge across your nook, not pushing yet, just teasing along your dilated entrance like he’s still using his tongue.

 This is fine, all right, this is okay, you’re going to be fine. You’re wetter than Equius after a visit by Flagship Piloteer Livewire in his pushiest mood; your seedflap is still throbbing and tight and ready to release. It’s not like Egbert’s going to—to—

 It takes a moment of silent gaping to get your breath back after the tip of Egbert’s bulge pops into your nook—fucking _pops_ , too fat and blunt to slip in easily. Thank god you’re slick, that’s all. You manage to keep your gasping quiet as the pain crests and fades, leaving behind a sharp, stretched ring of pain and the sensation of Egbert panting against your shoulder.

 He grips your hand tighter and mumbles something—nonsense, you think, or at least it sounds like nonsense because your English is slipping a bit right now—but you do know that it sounds happy, the same tone as his sigh when he rolls his hips. Mostly he grinds against your ass, but his bulge does push that bit deeper, just enough to cause another flare of pain.

 You’re _fine_ , Karkat, Christ, get it together. It’s not like Equius’s bulge wasn’t thicker—

 (okay yeah, but Equius’s bulge wasn’t thicker _all the way up_ , just at the very base where you didn’t always take it, not at the tip that he shoved deep deep _deep_ in you, all the way to your seedflap, _fuck_ —)

 “Karkat?” Egbert asks breathlessly, now rolling his hips steadily—little movements, little ones, fucking in and out in a torturous jagged rhythm that makes your breath catch with hope every time he withdraws, only to crash horribly when he pushes back in. It feels like he’s shoving his whole goddamn arm up in you but it’s—it’s not even that much, probably. You’re fine.

 “Yeah,” you gasp back. “Yeah, I _iiKKK_.”

 Egbert freezes. You don’t notice at first, because there’s nothing but blinding pain in your nook, the place where your muscles stop saying _ow fuck don’t make me stretch like that_ and instead go _NO NOT HERE NO MORE_. You aren’t fucking built to take a bulge like this, thick and rigid and unyielding, _ow_. Fuck, it feels like it’s going to tear you in two—actually, you’re not sure it _hasn’t_ torn anything yet, and that thought is paralyzing for a long horrible moment where the pain is the absolutely suffocating. Then you realize just how hard Egbert’s gripping your hand, holding it like it’s the only thing keeping him completely still.

 Very stiffly, he asks, “Are you okay?”

 For approximately three seconds, you seriously debate lying. You’re the Empress’ Grand Mediator, okay, and it might be mostly a paperwork position but you’re still a soldier and this is your duty, this arranged quadranting and its concupiscent obligations. But you remember how many goddamn times Egbert hesitated, how fucking serious he was about making sure that he never forced you or hurt you ( _Promise you’ll claw me?_ ) and you—you can’t, okay, you can’t set him up to do the exact thing he was so careful about not doing. That is shitty fucking behaviour, and you might be a shithead are not yet _that_ kind of shithead.

 “Not really,” you croak.

 It hurts when he moves his bulge, even to pull it out. Egbert shifts to lie beside you instead of on top, and you both lay there panting in silence for a bit. Now you just feel fucking _empty_ , and bruised, like you’ll never be tight again. It isn’t until Egbert runs his hand up your arm to squeeze your shoulder that you realize you’re shaking.

“Ugh, fuck, I’m sorry,” you mutter. “I was—trying to—”

“Jesus, Karkat, I don’t _care_. I don’t wanna hurt you.”

Fuck. Fuck, why, why does he say that kind of thing, in that voice, like he—like you—like caring is a thing that happens in this arranged quadrant binding. “Yeah. I.” You clear your throat gruffly. “Thanks.”

 (Because he fucking _does_ care because he is an idiot because his job is literally _taking care of people_ whenever and wherever they get their stupid asses into trouble and that is not the kind of life’s work a person can take on without really meaning it because holy human Jesus Christ your matesprit _cares_.)

 “Are you okay?”

 “I’m fine. I mean, I’m fine now. It doesn’t hurt that much anymore.” You shove your face into the blankets, grab your horns, and swear in muffled Alternian until you feel less like you’re about to boil over with frustration that all this was for _nothing_. When you surface, you turn your head the other way so that you’re facing Egbert. “Look, do you still want to…?”

 “Uh, _no_ , not if it hurts you like that!”

 “I didn’t mean like that,” you snap. “There’s probably… something else I could do? Like—fuck, uh…”

 “You don’t want to stop?”

 You take a shaky breath, because yes, you’re still wet and quivery despite everything that just happened. “If you stop then I’m taking this pail into the ablution trap and locking you out.”

 Egbert huffs a laugh and squirms closer, throwing a leg over yours. His bulge, as you see when you dart your eyes down for a quick look, is still halfway between ‘normal’ and ‘abandon hope all ye whom this enters.’ You figure that probably means you can salvage the situation.

 Egbert salvages it first, though, doing that thing he does where he kisses the shit out of you and it’s so fucking nice that you relax into it within seconds. You wiggle all the way in, close enough that your rumblespheres rub against his chest fur (which is, uh— _fuck_ , apparently you’ve got a xeno kink you never knew about). Egbert sighs through his nose and runs his hand through your hair, petting gently. Determined not to be outdone, you stroke the nape of his neck.

 He puts his thumb beneath your jaw and kisses you a little harder.

 You rumble at him and scrape your claws lightly down his spine. He arches automatically when you hit a particular spot on his lower back.

 He makes the most pathetic echo of a growl ever and climbs on top of you, sucking determinedly on your lower lip. You bite, he grinds against you; you get a hand on his ass and he sucks messily on your neck and you sort of lose track with how fast everything starts escalating. It turns into a blur of petting and grinding. Your heart rate steps up higher and higher until you start feeling the echo of it in your nook again, the hungry throb of mating fondness overcoming self-preservation as your instincts whisper _okay but if we try again maybe it’ll go better this time_.

 “Okay, I got it,” Egbert pants. “Roll over. Here, towel—”

 “This feels a lot like what we just fucking did,” you say, because it is pretty much exactly the same, right down to the bulge pushing against your ass. If he wanted to, you’d probably let him, but… you’d be disappointed.

 “I got this, promise.” Egbert kisses the back of your neck, the fuckhead. That’s playing dirty. “Promise you’ll claw me?”

 Your bloodpusher flutters stupidly. “Promise.”

 Egbert hums and rubs his bulge against your ass a bit, making a pleased noise when it slides into the crack. You flex your gluteal muscles and he humps you a little harder.

 It’s hard to protest, given the circumstances, but you have standards, okay, and _fuck_ if your first time flushed is going to end like this. “Egbert, I think we’re a little old to be humping like pail-scared wigglers.”

 “Oh my god, Karkat, okay, chill. I just didn’t want to move too fast.”

 “Move _where_?”

 Egbert takes his shaft in one hand and pushes it between your legs. You jump despite yourself.

 “Egbert!”

 “Relax, I’m just getting wet. Oh my god, you’re so wet.” He kiss-licks the back of your neck, stirring a shivery prickle down your spine. “It’s so nice, you’re just—fuck. Karkat. I promise I’m not going to—can I move, please, can I—”

 “Fine, do whatever—just…”

 Your words get lost when he rubs the head of his bulge against your nook again, up and down and up, over and over. It slips between the swollen lips of your nook, drawing a sharp breath from you, but doesn’t press any farther. He keeps going, tracing his bulge in slow controlled trails up and down, then around in circles, teasing and gentle, then a smooth slide of his whole shaft flat along your nook.

 Without realizing it, you get lost in the rhythmic motion, gradually relaxing into the sensation until you find yourself lying limply beneath Egbert with your eyes shut and breathing open-mouthed, a slow deep counterpoint to Egbert’s shallow pent-up breathing.

 “Egbert, ‘re you…”

 “You good?”

 “Yeah.” You’re both whispering for no damn reason. But this feels fucking _close_ , tight and intimate, with you pinned beneath Egbert’s warm weight and feeling every slow flex of his body, every warm rasp of his breath. You kind of don’t want to break the moment.

 Egbert’s knees tighten on your outer thighs. “Here, just…” Baffled, you close your legs. His bulge pulses against your nook, trapped. “Ah, fuck. Karkat.”

 Tentatively, he rocks his hips. His bulge slides in the tight channel of your legs, and suddenly you get it. You tighten your thighs—and grab his hand again, because this is almost like pailing and he’s still going to hold your hand through it, goddammit.

 He squeezes your fingers and rocks on top of you and this time when your chest starts feeling all warm and tingly, it doesn’t stop.

 “Okay, just—hn.” His breath tickles your ear. “Can I—?”

 “Fuck, yes, do it.”

 His bulge slides up your nook and back down, smearing slickness all the way up between your asscheeks. Breathing a little unsteadily, Egbert does it again, and again. The back and forth motion is alien, nothing like the circular grind behind a hilt-deep bulge, but you sort of start to get a feel for it—for the flex of Egbert’s muscles on top of you, if nothing else.

 By the tenth thrust or so, your nook is tingling, stimulated and sensitive. Every shift of his bulge sends a frisson of pleasure through you. You breathe a little heavier too, and not just because of his weight. His weight is fucking negligible compared to Equius’. This is—it’s—not what you thought it would be, but _fuck_.

 You like this, okay. You like the muted happy noises Egbert is making against your neck, the way his fingers squeeze and relax rhythmically every time he thrusts his bulge between your legs, against your ass, rubs it slow and tantalizing against your nook, yes you like this and you like him, fuck, you _like_ him because he does shit like this, because he cares, because this might be an arranged quadranting between complete strangers but he fucks you like _this_ when he could have just finished licking your nook and then jerked off between your rumblespheres—hell, because he fucks you like this when he could have been making you muffle noise into the mattress.

 He makes a whale noise into your ear and you can’t even laugh, because the noise that comes out of _you_ in response is an embarrassingly genuine chirp. Egbert snuffles a chuckle and sucks on your earlobe, pets your hair with his free hand—generally just smothers you with fucking affection, all of it vaguely distracted.

 He gets even more distracted when you flex your ass and tighten your thighs, but the dip in attention is more than made up for by the stroking of your smuggery gland. You try to start flexing and rolling your hips in time with him, which is difficult because you just _do not get_ this thrusting motion the way Egbert seems to. He grunts and grabs your hip and helps you figure it out—moving in opposition to him rather than in tandem, the opposite way you would have thought it worked—and even if you’re a little rough on the timing, he doesn’t seem to care. You don’t give a fuck either, because when you get in on the movement too, the friction against your nook gets a whole fuckload more intense.

 “ _Harder_ ,” you demand. Your chirpbox is fucking with your English, mangling the vowels.

 It doesn’t seem to matter. Egbert makes a rough noise in your ear, something that might be ‘finally’ and might be ‘please.’ Above you, he sets his shoulders hard and spreads his knees, widening and lowering his stance. At the very end of the next thrust, the head of his shaft smacks into the cup of your bone bulge, sending up a bright shock of surprise from the sensitive flesh of your acid valve.

 Egbert curses and moves faster, pistoning his bulge hard. The slap of his hips against your ass isn’t _quite_ loud enough to drown out all the wet slurping from the mess your sopping nook has made between your legs. The constant friction against your nook lips is maddening.

 His angle changes a few times on the longer thrusts, catching sharply on the rim of your nook when he thrusts too far inward. It makes you yelp in surprise, makes your nook _ache_ emptily, a sharp counterpoint to the way each thrust bounces your swelling genebladders against the mattress. As the pressure increases, so does your desperation.

 Every instinct in your body is telling you to spread your legs, to open _wider_ for the bulge that can’t quite get in, but you can’t, you _can’t_. It takes almost more concentration than you’ve got to fight the instinct, to keep your legs shut and clench tight, sobbing for breath, squirming and grinding back uselessly against Egbert as he fucks you and fucks you but never quite goes all the way, never quite far enough, deep enough, full enough, _fuck_ , “ _FUCK_ , Egbert, please, fuck, I need, I, fuck,” you’re gasping, as broken as your sentences.

 Egbert wraps his arms around you and gathers you in close, letting all his weight down on you in order to hold tightly. His thrusts get shallower and sloppier now that he’s not bracing against anything, which makes you both growl and gasp in frustration, but you still reach an arm back to take a fistful of his hair and pull, holding him even closer. He bites your neck, your jaw, ragged blunt-toothed bites with no force and no threat, just melting-sweet demonstrations of why you should trust him, like him, stay right here forever right here beneath him like this.

 “Karkat, fuck,” he rasps. “Jesus, you’re so _wet_.” He manages to put one elbow out and lean all his weight on it. His thrusts get deeper again, driving a ragged chirr out of you. Your nook squelches.

 “Are you not?” you ask, barely able to manage the words. Is he _not_ wet? Because it felt a lot like he was enjoying this, but if he isn’t enjoying this, then—

 “Hff, no, I’m close. I’m just—”

 Suddenly choked by a desperate need, you grab his wrist and squeeze it for attention. “Pail—pail me.”

 “What? I mean I thought I _was_.”

 “Pail _inside_ me. Fuck, I—come in me, when you do, I want…”

 Shit, you don’t think you can explain this; you didn’t think you’d _have_ to explain this because you always assumed Egbert would actually have his bulge inside you. Being used as a bucket is usually gross and rude and degrading as hell, but it’s also—as a romantic trope, especially during a first flush fuck, it can be— _intimate_ , almost scarily so. And you just—so what if you have high fucking standards, okay (high _fucking standards_ , ha), because you only get four first times and the other two you’ve had were pretty goddamn amazing.

 Egbert buries his face in your neck. “Jesus, Karkat,” he groans. “Okay, I can do that. Hang on, I’m gonna—”

 When he tries to untangle himself from you, it takes a moment for you to catch on. Using both hands to prop himself up again, he fucks you harder than before, fast rough strokes that slop noisily between your thighs. You clench and shake and do your goddamn best not to outright combust from the way your nook is aching.

 Suddenly it stops, and Egbert is swearing and prying his hand between your thighs, yanking one of them sideways as he mutters, “Karkat Karkat c’mon I’m gonna Karkat fuck I’m—” Rubbing the head of his bulge against your nook again, this time without nearly as much care, _pushing_ until he finds the entrance between your swollen folds and shoves in, probably more roughly than he meant to but he’s shaking, you can feel it, his knees clamped tight around your outer thighs and his knuckles smacking your ass as he jerks his bulge furiously. With a strangled yelp, Egbert slams a hand down beside your head and falls forward on it, his hips jerking helplessly.

 A heady wave of pain and utter fucking lust crashes over you when you feel him come—and it’s not as much as you expected, not _nearly_ , but it’s there, inside you, he’s coming inside he’s filling you like a pail oh _fuck_. Your gene feelers writhe in reaction to the nucleic acids, even if they are alien as fuck, but it’s enough, it’s _enough_ to make your feelers thrill and your seedflap quiver and your whole nook clench like a fist.

 “ _Pail_ ,” you gasp, “pail, fuck,” then flail for it because it’s closer to you than to Egbert, right at the head of the platform where you put it. You grab it and force your way up onto your hands and knees even with Egbert still on top of you, making him yelp and scrabble to hold on. On all fours, you shove the pail between your knees.

 “Are you—” he’s saying, and you babble, “Fuck, fingers, goddamn shit, I need—” but what you get is Egbert’s tongue, stabbing hard and deep and laving frantically in the sloppy fucking mess of your slurry and _his_ slurry and that’s it, that’s the thing that gets you off. You spill messily into the bucket, your seedflap clenching and releasing in long gushing pulses. Through the wave of relief, you can’t honestly tell what’s better: the psychosomatic pleasure of your thighs squeezing hard against the rim, or Egbert’s hands on your hips to hold you steady.

  _Egbert’s hands_ , you decide dizzily when he grabs the bucket and catches you around the waist before you can pitch over flat on your face. _Definitely Egbert’s hands_.

 “So that explains the buckets then,” he says, as he stretches off to drop the bucket to the side of the bed.

 “Fuck you, you already watched the porn and I know it.” Your mouth feels sloppy and your words come out slurred. Post-concupiscence is the worst.

 Egbert just laughs, flops down on the platform beside you, and manhandles your body into a position he can snuggle. He makes an excellent economy-size soup utensil. Right, you remember belatedly, this isn’t a pitch romance. He’s not going to be trying to catch you in a weak moment the way Equius would have been.

 He doesn’t even make you demand to cuddle; he just _does_. He wraps you up in his sweaty furry mammalian embrace, not just with his arms but with his whole body. The sweat might be familiar but the fur is new, and still weirderotickinkthrilling. John Egbert is a furry, friendly cuddler. This is the best thing.

 John Egbert is also a hand-holder, and a neck-kisser. You chirp sleepily at him until he starts being a stupid giggling dork and attempts to mimic the noises back to you, at which point you basically can’t deal with it and you twist around to bite his lip. He hums and licks lazily into your mouth.

 You’re going to give this five more minutes—ten more minutes. Then you’re going to get in the ablution trap and find out if he’s a bulge-licker too, because your bulge is late as fuck but the tip is squirming interestedly at the opening of your sheath, and you think Egbert—John—could do some goddamn incredible things if he put his tongue on that.

 (You think this quadranting might actually turn out okay after all.)


End file.
